Draw Muhammad Day backfires for Seattle cartoonist

If the Internet respected intentions, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris might have had a good May.

“It’s been horrible,” Norris said from her home Wednesday. “I’m just trying to breathe and get through it.”

It is a culturally, religiously and even racially charged viral movement Norris sparked in April when she drew a cartoon to protest Comedy Central’s decision to nix a recent “South Park” episode that tested the taboo on depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Her cartoon featured a proclamation that Thursday, May 20, be “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.”

She didn’t mean it, but here’s the punchline: It didn’t matter.

“Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” took off within days of Norris’ April post and a subsequent appearance on “The Dave Ross Show” she says she also regrets. Thousands of images have already appeared on at least two related Facebook pages she did not create that boasted upwards of 71,000 members Thursday afternoon and features not discussion or debate but streams of verbal and visual vitriol.

Online causes form a yin-yang, so here’s the bright side: A Facebook page against these Facebook pages had 72,000 fans Thursday.

Depiction of any prophet is prohibited in Islam, a cultural tenet that led to riots, religious tension and even deaths after European papers published cartoons featuring Islam’s chief prophet in 2006.

In the weeks since Norris posted her cartoon, blogs have fumed. Muslim advocacy groups have braced for impact. And today, a Pakistani court ordered authorities to block Facebook in the country until this all blows over.

Meanwhile, Norris lost 7 pounds and her comfort in artistic obscurity.

“I’m pretty compulsive. I put things on my blog or on my Facebook page right when I make them, all my cartoons and stuff,” she said. “I guess now I would think about how to create something to stay specific to what I was talking about in case it goes viral.”

But there’s nothing she can do to stop it — or even turn away. She’s spent today battling alternating waves of anxiety and serenity, she said, checking Facebook, taking a walk, then checking Facebook again.

When the big day arrives Thursday, Norris will leave Seattle on a vacation she’d scheduled with a friend before this began. Her friend is bringing an iPhone. If it gets coverage where she’s going, Norris said, she’ll check some more.